Month: February 2001

For many Americans, weaned on provocative media images, the Middle East is thought of in terms of burning American flags and massive street demonstrations. But Memphian Ceylon Mooney recently got a firsthand look as one of the few American faces in the crowd at a Baghdad demonstration to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the Gulf War.

“I was surrounded by thousands of Iraqis,” Mooney remembers. “They were chanting, in Arabic, something like, “Our life and our blood is in Saddam,” but all I’m hearing is “duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh-duh-duh-Saddam.” It was pretty intimidating, because I looked really American. But they were coming up to me, shaking my hand, and giving me hugs, and saying, ‘Welcome to Iraq’ and ‘Welcome to Baghdad.’ There was a lot of chanting, a lot of marching, a lot of burning flags, and the curse on their lips was the name of our country. But at the same time it was a celebration that they had survived 10 years of bombings and sanctions.”

Mooney, a 26-year-old member of the local punk band Pezz, was in Iraq, in violation of U.N. and U.S. sanctions, last month as part of a 45-person delegation called Iraq Sanctions Challenge IV, led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Mooney believes that he is the first Memphian to travel to Iraq since the Gulf War. The delegation brought $1.5 million worth of medical and school supplies to give to the Iraqi people, and also traveled to the country to learn more about the effect of post-Gulf War economic sanctions on Iraq’s civilian population and to bring that knowledge back to the United States.

In Iraq, Mooney says, the group witnessed proof of a public health crisis brought about by environmental damage from the bombing and the lack of medical supplies due to the sanctions. He also paints the picture of a country where economic sanctions punish the weak while making Saddam Hussein’s regime more powerful by forcing citizens to rely on the government for all basic needs.

Mooney says that his understanding of the damage caused by the sanctions was only confirmed by the trip, but that his understanding of the Iraqi people themselves was greatly affected. “People in Iraq differentiate between American people and the American government. It was very humbling. It made me ashamed, actually,” Mooney says. “Iraq is an educated country and they are well aware of what Arab stereotypes are in America.They also know that their suffering is because of U.N. Security Council resolutions and they know that those are there because of U.S. power. So that’s where they place the blame for this. Basically, I saw a lot of what I expected to see, but I did not expect the Iraqi people to be so welcoming of us.” One man, during the demonstration, even gave Mooney a ring off his finger in exchange for Mooney’s New York Yankees ski cap.

But not all interaction with the Iraqi people was that smooth. The delegation visited a couple of elementary schools where they were mobbed by school children, but these visits also delivered a moment that put the visitors into perspective. “These are kids who have grown up only knowing a life of sanctions and bombing,” says Mooney. “And at one school, someone from our group made the mistake of going into a classroom without permission from the teacher first, and had a friend translate to the kids in Arabic, ‘What message do you want us to take home to the United States?’ The teacher, shocked, came in and said, ‘How dare you step into this classroom. How dare you ask these kids that when you’ve bombed us and your country has these sanctions against us?’ Then she started crying, and so did the rest of the classroom.”

A few years ago, a casino executive who had relocated to Mississippi was on a panel at a gambling convention and revealed the secret to his new property’s success. It had nothing to do with double-diamond slot machines, busty cocktail waitresses, internal cost controls, or the intricacies of the game of craps.

“Just keep serving fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and greens and you’ll do fine,” he said.

Such simple fare might have worked at one time in the Pleistocene Era of the casino backwaters. After all, the first casino in Tunica County, Splash, sold hot dogs and charged $10 admission for months before it got around to grilling steaks. The second one, Bally’s, featured a McDonald’s. The third, the President Casino, partnered up with Dale’s, a homey meat-and-three restaurant in Southaven.

Southern cooking still has an honored place on most casino buffets, but nobody can get by on the cheap any more. Just because casinos give away a lot of food doesn’t mean they don’t take it seriously.

Tunica’s history has been an ongoing game of follow-the-leader. First it was a race to get in the water. Then came the Robinsonville land rush. Then the big hotels and live entertainment. The latest craze is pulling out all the stops to upgrade buffets and restaurants.

At the 10 casinos in Tunica County, the minimum package now is a buffet for low-rollers, a steak house for high-rollers, and a third offering somewhere in between. A la carte entrees for $25 are not uncommon, and buffets are creeping toward $15 and could go higher, according to some insiders.

Not that everybody’s paying, of course. Casinos comp as many as 75 percent of their restaurant customers. Food is a marketing tool and a come-on as well as a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week job. The competition is as important as the boasting over who has the biggest-name entertainment or the loosest slots.

“The Tunica market is driven by food and the value people perceive in that,” says Don Sally, food and beverage director for Sam’s Town, which just completed a renovation that totaled $22 million.

Sally’s career stops include culinary school in Santa Barbara, California, a degree in hotel administration from the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the Hyatt resort on the Big Island of Hawaii, the Luxor casino in Las Vegas, and the Silver Star Casino in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Boyd Gaming, the parent company of Sam’s Town, relinquished its management contract at the Choctaw Indian-owned Silver Star last year for $72 million. Meanwhile, Sam’s Town was losing market share in Tunica because its low-brow Western theme had become stale in the face of increased competition. So Boyd brought in Sally and went for a makeover.

“We’ve put together a new team here with a chef we hired from a Hyatt five-diamond resort,” says Sally. “It’s sort of a revolving door. Our chef went to Gold Strike, and theirs went to Fitzgerald’s.”

The new layout features a revamped steak house with a 125-label wine list and a vastly enlarged $5 million buffet. At so-called “action” Brazilian-style cooking stations, 22 skewers spin sausages and slabs of meat over a charcoal fire. Most of the food at other stations is also prepared to order instead of being scooped out of heating pans (although Corky’s barbecue and ribs has moved upstairs and is now served buffet style). The pies and cakes are presented bakery-style instead of in little precut portions. The ice cream is hand-scooped Haagen- Dazs rather than soft-serve.

“On the first week of the new buffet, on a Monday, we did 4,500 covers [customers] in one day and we hope to get to the 8,000-mark at maximum capacity,” says Sally.

The dinner buffet costs $13.95, but the average tab at Sam’s Town is still only about $8. Sam’s Town does about $18 million a year in food and drinks and still budgets a loss on it, as do its competitors.

Sally makes no bones about the fact that Jack Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, with its own recently revamped buffet and steakhouse, was, in his opinion, the Tunica standard for food.

“People have seen what these other places have and we realize we are going to have to stay on this every year,” Sally says.

About half of Sam’s Town’s food customers are comped. At neighboring Hollywood Casino, food and beverage vice president Marc Silverberg says 73 percent of meals are comped at the casino’s buffet and restaurants. The average check ranges from $7.75 at the buffet to $43 at the steakhouse. (In casino accounting, comped meals are charged off as marketing, but the numbers are based on the prices in the menu.) A telling indicator: The seafood buffet, just $9 when Hollywood opened, is now $16 — and features sushi. The buffet has more cooking stations where the food is prepared in plain view of the customer to accentuate freshness. In short, higher quality at a higher price.

“We’re a necessary evil,” says Silverberg, who formerly worked for Harrah’s in Atlantic City and Memphis before moving to the Hollywood as executive chef in 1994. “You have to try to get the customers one way or another. What we have to do is try to control the loss.”

Hollywood did about $15 million in food and beverage business last year, losing about $1.50 on average on each customer.

Luring customers is one challenge. Holding on to help is another. Hollywood has 301 food and beverage employees, which is about one-fourth of its total number of employees and 30 percent of its payroll.

“It’s a chess match where we have to constantly train and teach,” says Silverberg. “Our steakhouse manager, for example, started as a server at the buffet. That is the only way you survive here.”

As someone familiar with Atlantic City and Las Vegas, Silverberg sees Tunica as still in its infancy in some areas. With gambling operations far more alike than different, what distinguishes one casino from another is its food, hotel, and entertainment. Those so-called support operations, whether steaks and whiskey or showgirls and magicians, are heavily subsidized by the slots and table games. But that could change a bit.

“In support operations here, all of us take it in the shorts,” says Silverberg. “In Vegas it’s different. Fifty-five percent of all revenue is made in support operations. I paid 25 bucks for a buffet out there a few weeks ago. I believe we’ll be there one day.”

The Tunica Food Chain: 1991-2001

Pre-Casino: The Blue and White and The Hollywood Cafe rule.

1993: Splash serves hot dogs.

1994: Southern Belle opens first steakhouse; casino closes.

1995: Harrah’s popularizes cooking “stations” concept.

1996: Horseshoe sets gold standard for buffets.

1998: Circus Circus upgrades to Gold Strike.

2000: Haagen-Dazs replaces soft-serve at Sam’s Town.

[This article previously appeared in the January issue of Memphis Magazine.]

You can only get so far on hot dogs, peanuts, and barbecue nachos. Such was the thinking of the Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation when they created the Plaza Club. Located on the 20,000- square-foot second floor of the Toyota Center adjacent to AutoZone Park, the club is a private dining, meeting, and social facility in what has become the heart of Memphis’ downtown renaissance.

The brainchild of Dean and Kristi Jernigan, the Plaza Club offers members two primary dining areas, four meeting rooms, and reciprocal privileges with a pair of area golf courses — Plantation and Cherokee Valley in Olive Branch, Mississippi — as well as reciprocal relationships with other stadium clubs across the country — e.g. Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Turner Field in Atlanta, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Camden Yards in Baltimore. An on-site concierge can help members make reservations with these reciprocal clubs, and even purchase tickets to events at the various member stadiums.

With an initial fee of $500, along with monthly dues of $60, members have access to the kind of facility typically found only in the big leagues, and that was the aim all along. Says Plaza Club president Jason Macaulay, “This was always a part of the plan. I once talked to the owner of a minor-league team and asked him what he thought of reciprocals. He said no one in the major leagues would want to deal with us. I come from a club background [The Racquet Club, the University Club] and clubs have reciprocals. What you have to do is find the right people.” Not only did Macaulay capture the ear of several big-league baseball franchises, he arranged privileges with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Rams.

Dining at the club, which opened in October and has more than 1,200 members, is in the hands of chef Tim Loving, who trained at the Culinary Institute of New York. The menu for the Martin Room (the primary dining area, named after the owners of the old Memphis Red Sox of the Negro Leagues) features the likes of pan-roasted duck breast, bacon-wrapped halibut, and lobster saffron risotto, as well as several desserts and an extensive wine list. A more casual menu is offered in the smaller Russwood Grill (named after the stadium that burned to the ground in 1960), with Plaza Calamari and a lobster club sandwich among the entrees.

The facility was designed by Looney Ricks Kiss Interiors and can best be described as elegantly modern. For special events such as weddings and banquets, the Martin Room can accommodate up to 275 guests. A health-and-fitness facility is also being discussed, perhaps to be located on another floor of the Toyota Center.

All this — fine dining, special benefits, private meeting rooms — and no peanut shells.

NOTE: This article originally appeared in the “City Beat” section of Memphis Magazine.